


Pirates

by nothingeverlost



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1778635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingeverlost/pseuds/nothingeverlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy had a realization three days out to sea, which was about three and a half days too late to do anything about it.  The six pounds per month that Lady Jane Foster was paying her might be more than she could have earned anywhere else, all things considered, but it wasn’t enough to deal with pirates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anachronisms abound here. Not to be taken seriously at all, but I hope it amuses.

Darcy had a realization three days out to sea, which was about three and a half days too late to do anything about it. The six pounds per month that Lady Jane Foster was paying her might be more than she could have earned anywhere else, all things considered, but it wasn’t enough to deal with pirates.

“They’re not pirates,” Jane insisted. Again.

“The Captain has an eyepatch,” Darcy pointed out as they walked along the deck. They were allowed one hour each morning and one hour each afternoon above deck, and Darcy insisted that they take full advantage. Jane might be completely content in their quarters with her tools and books and scribblings, but Darcy was suffocating.

“There was probably an accident. This far from land it isn’t easy to get medical treatment.” Despite the twelve hours a day she spent working, Jane still carried a notebook.

“They hired you to find a lost treasure.” The clues they’d been given and the shred of old map were so vague they’d be lucky to find anything.

“We’re tracking a faster journey to the Spice Islands,” Jane insisted.

“They told us we weren’t allowed down in the hold,” Darcy added.

“There’s gunpowder down there. If anyone dropped a lamp the whole ship would explode.”

Darcy didn’t believe her. There was no reason to check on the gunpowder three times a day. With food. If Captain Kith and the crew of the Aether weren’t pirates then she was a highborn lady with a fortune. In truth she was a woman too well educated to be happy doing menial work, and yet too poor to turn down work when it was offered. She’d thought that the job as companion to Lady Jane Foster had been the perfect answer.

If working for Jane got her killed or stranded on a desert island she was going to be very upset.

II

Two o’clock in the morning was the perfect time to explore the forbidden parts of the ship. She’d spent a week paying attention to the movements of everyone on the ship. During the day there was a flurry of activity, but at night there were only a few crew members - pirates - assigned to guard or pilot the ship, or whatever it was that happened on a ship at night. Darcy didn’t really pay that much attention, other than making sure she knew the quickest route to a rowboat if she needed to escape in a hurry. With Jane, of course. Probably. Unless she was being stubborn.

By one o’clock the nightly poker game was usually over, and the men were in their bunks. It was four when the cook woke up to start their meals, though food was a generous term for what was slopped into their bowls each morning. So by sneaking down the ladder at two Darcy was guaranteed three hours to work on the mystery of what was happening on the ship. Keeping Jane’s warning in mind she was very careful with the single candle she carried. Blowing up the ship was a bad idea, even if they were pirates. 

As promised there were wooden barrels in the hold, labeled ‘gunpowder’ as well as ‘salt’ and ‘flour.’ Darcy wondered if the cook had ever mixed them up. She wondered if anyone would notice if he did. 

Past the barrels, though, there was a light. Which was strange, considering that no one was supposed to be in the hold. Strange enough that she should have taken it as a warning and left.

Darcy didn’t listen to warnings very well.

The light threw thin shadows against the wall; as she got closer she understood that it was prison bars that created the shadows. The far corner of the hold was a jail cell. Or a cage.

“I knew it.” Darcy didn’t mean to say it out loud, and she certainly didn’t mean to get the prisoner’s attention. She failed pretty spectacularly. 

“You shouldn’t be down here.” She could barely see him at first, the brown clothing and brown hair and way too much brown dirt blending into the wood planks of the walls. Whoever he was, offering him a bath apparently wasn’t a high priority.

“Probably not, but I also shouldn’t be on a pirate ship four days away from the closest land mass. And yet here I am.” Darcy shrugged, moving closer to the cell but staying an arm’s width away. “So what’s your story?”

“They don’t like me very much.” He looked up in the general direction of the deck above them.

“I wouldn’t have guessed that.” Darcy couldn’t resist rolling her eyes. “Why are they keeping you around, though? I mean, Captain Kith seems more of a walk the plank kind of guy.”

He was a pirate after all.

“I’m just interesting enough to be valuable to them.” Darcy sat on a barrel just out of reach of the bars. Not that he seemed like a threat or anything, but to be honest the lack of showers made the air sour smelling.

“Valuable enough that they let you have books?” Darcy eyed the leather bound stack in the corner of the cell hungrily. She’d only been able to fit three in her bag, and Jane’s reading taste ran to science journals.

“They don’t want me to get bored. Or angry.” The prisoner picked up the top one. “Would you like to borrow one?”

“Really?” Forget caution, Darcy hopped off her barrel and walked straight towards him. He didn’t even try to touch her.

“Just don’t let anyone see. If they guess that you’ve been down here they might hurt you,” he warned.

“I can take care of myself.”

II

“So India, huh?” She was back the next night, armed with a lemon and his name. Bruce Banner, as it was written neatly on the inside cover of the book.

“I like to travel.” He said thank you when she handed him the fruit, and stared at it for a full minute. It was sour as hell, but Jane said it was important to eat fruit when you were at sea, and all she’s seen in his cell are bowls of gruel.

“Interesting method of transportation you picked this time.” She’d spent an hour today hiding on the deck after her walk with Jane, when she was supposed to be in her quarters, and as a reward had heard a conversation between a couple of members of the crew about their prisoner. He didn’t look like anyone they had to be careful around.

“It wasn’t my first choice.” He peeled the lemon with care, the peel a perfect spiral.

“And when we get to wherever we’re going? What happens then?” it was a piece of the puzzle she couldn’t figure out. They were looking for something, and Jane was part of the plan. Bruce, she had to guess, was another. Darcy was just in the way.

“I hope you don’t find out.” He frowned, but as he took the first bite of the lemon he smiled. “Tastes clean.”

“Probably the only thing on this ship that is clean.” Darcy wrinkled her nose. She didn’t like being dirty, and a sponge bath in salt water didn’t fix everything.

“Sailors don’t usually care too much about being clean.”

“Yeah,” Darcy agreed. Especially when they were pirates.

II

“You should stop coming down here. Someone might catch you.” After a week Darcy’s days had become a monotony, only broken up by her walks above with Jane and her visits down below with Bruce.

“If they lock me up at least you’ll share all your books, won’t you?” She’d also get to have a closer look at whatever he was writing in his notebook. She’d grown used to his cramped writing from the margins of his books, but it was too far way to see anything.

Panic flashed on his face. “You can’t come in here.”

“But your quarters are so roomy and luxurious. And I promise I won’t peek when you change for bed,” she grinned. Though in truth she’d break that rule in a heart beat. She wouldn’t mind seeing Bruce Banner without his shirt on.

“Darcy, don’t do anything to get noticed by the Captain. And if you have a chance to get off the ship, take it.”

“What, and abandon all this luxury?” She swept her hand in the general direction of the salted fish and gunpowder.

“Darcy, the Captain’s not what he seems.”

“I think he’s exactly what he seems.” After all, he was a pirate.

II

It was the afternoon of their tenth day when everything changed. They were on their walk around the deck when the man in the crow’s nest started shouting. A second ship had been sighted. It moved with unnatural speed, catching up with them before the Captain could insist that she and jane go below deck.

“Um, Jane?” Darcy pointed up to the pain mast, where a new flag hung. Black, with a skull and crossbones. 

“Oh.” Jane blinked a few times, but the flag didn’t change.

“Yeah.” Darcy didn’t say ‘I told you so.’ She was bigger than that. Sometimes. 

“What do you think is happening?”

“Someone’s realized that we’ve been kidnapped by pirates and now they’re rescuing us?” As it turned out she was half right. It was a rescue mission, just not for them.

“You have something that belongs to me.” Within minutes they were boarded by a man in a tailored jacket of scarlet and gold that seemed way too neat to belong to someone more than a week at sea. His grin was cocky, his two crew members dressed all in black, and the name painted on the side of his ship read ‘The Avenger.’ Antonio Stark was exactly like the accounts that had been spread about him.

Captain Kith was unimpressed, but Stark’s companions soon made him see the error of his ways.

“Take me to Dr. Banner,” Stark insisted.

“I can take you.” She and Jane had found refuge behind a stack of crates, but Bruce’s name had her curious. “He’s down in the hold, next to the gunpowder.”

“That’s oddly fitting.” Stark snorted. “Lead the way, lady fair.”

“Flirt all you want, you’re not getting into my skirts,” Darcy told him with a smile as she led the way to Banner’s cage.

“You wound me.” But he grinned at her, and Darcy decided that she and Jane were definitely throwing their lot in with this guy. He might be a pirate as well, but with way less creep factor.

“Bruce, I brought you company. Also a way out, I’m pretty sure.” It was the first time she’d been in the hold during the day. There was absolutely no difference.

“Darcy, I warned you to stay away.”

“Banner, you’ve been gone too long. You’ve forgotten all of my rules on how to court a wench. We’re going to have to start all the way at the top with ‘how to get them to stay’ aren’t we?” Stark sighed, but it was totally a fake sigh.

“Tony?” Bruce had been sleeping, or at least laying on the cot. Now he stood, eyes squinting as if he didn’t believe what he saw. “What are you doing here?”

“You are an idiot, Bruce, you know that?” Stark, or apparently Tony to some people, took something from his pocket. A small something, that somehow had the lock undone in seconds. “What do you think I’m doing here?”

“It’s dangerous. I…”

“Am coming with me. So’s your friend, I’m pretty sure, unless you think she’d rather hang here with Kith?”

“And Jane too,” Darcy insisted.

“What’s a Jane?” Tony asked, watching as Bruce stuffed a few things in a bag.

“My boss slash friend and the reason I’m here.”

“Well let’s get her and go before my crew gets restless and Hawkeye leads a mutiny. Again.” Darcy was pretty sure he was joking.

“Just need to grab a few things from my quarters and we can blow this place.” Perhaps literally. She wasn’t sure what Stark had in mind. “That is if you don’t mind the company, Bruce?”

“Take the first chance you can to get off this ship, remember? Even if that chance is a scoundrel like Stark.” But the look he gave Stark was gratitude.

“Awesome.” Pirates again, but at least this time it was a choice. Wait until she told Jane.


	2. More Pirates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So pirates, huh?”

“So pirates, huh?” There was smoke coming from one of the decks of the Aether, but it seemed to be staying afloat. Unfortunately. Darcy waited until it was clearly not turning around before facing her now free mysterious friend. At least she hoped he was a friend.

“Privateers is probably more accurate.” Bruce gave a brief glance over his shoulder before returning his attention to the crate of books at his feet. Everything that had been in his cell, minus the one Darcy had been ready and that one was in her satchel. Jane hadn’t been about the leave the ship without her journals, and Darcy wasn’t about to live in a single dress for however long it took them to get to land. Though the redhead woman climbing ropes was wearing trousers and the idea had some appeal.

“Swashbucklers.” Stark, who had somehow avoided carrying anything from one ship to the other, leaned against the railing of the deck above them. “I’m too good looking to be a pirate.”

“Pirate.” It was strange how well the man Stark had called Hawkeye was balancing while standing on the railing. The bow dangling from his hand seemed just as strange to see on a ship. Darcy had noticed him aiming it at the pirates. He seemed disappointed that he hadn’t been able to use any arrows.

“I could make you swim home, you know. It’s my ship,” Stark fired back.

“I’ll tell Fury you said that,” Hawkeye said with a shrug.

“Or we could focus on steering the boat. We’re due to pick up Cap the day after tomorrow and unless the wind picks up we’re going to be late.” Darcy blinked when the woman who had been climbing the rigging was suddenly at her side, seemingly in one single movement.

“We’re buying caps?” Darcy asked. “Or are we stealing them?”

“Rescuing, most likely,” Stark answered. “Considering his track record there’s untold number of people chasing him at this moment.”

“Which is why we need to get there.” The woman raised a single eyebrow. Darcy wondered just how much she could say without speaking. She seemed that type. She walked away, and the two men followed.

“I should show you your quarters,” Bruce offered once they were alone.

“Aren’t you tired of being below deck?” So far as she knew it was at least the first time he’d been in the sunlight in at least two weeks. “We could stay up here a while longer. Find some seats and enjoy the view, maybe?”

“I’d rather walk.” She noticed for the first time that he held onto the railing, not as steady on her feet as the others. The cage, she remembered, hadn’t been big enough to take more than a few steps.

“It’s not a park but I wouldn’t mind a few laps.” She was homesick for green grass; talk about things she never expected to miss. 

“You don’t have to.” He shook his head.

“Haven’t you figured out yet, Bruce, that I never do things because I have to do them?” They’d barely touched, nothing more than hands as they exchanged books. But now she reached out and took his hand.

“Shall we?”


End file.
